


Tides

by Roadie



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Feelings, Plot, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:48:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29767488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadie/pseuds/Roadie
Summary: Canon divergence from 2x06. Maggie rejects Alex. Alex cuts Maggie out of her life. But then, somehow, they start sleeping together. Regularly. And that makes it very, very hard to sort out their feelings.
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer
Comments: 57
Kudos: 258





	Tides

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone always wants more smut for these guys and I figured I should put up or shut up. So, uh, here you go? Have some Sanvers sex. With some plot. And some feelings.
> 
> Odds are good that I'll put this behind a "logged-in users only" wall in a few days, so if you're a guest and want to save it, I encourage you to download. 
> 
> Thanks to @Kelinswriter for listening to me be a chickenshit as I decided whether or not I had the chutzpah to post something this explicit.

As a child, Alex learned to bodysurf in the ocean near her home. She would paddle out to the deep water and let the waves catch her and thrust her up onto the beach. The sand was too coarse there, made of small pebbles and the sharp corners of broken shells, and it would get inside her swimsuit, scrubbing her skin into a rough, red mess.

But even as a child, when the saltwater burned, and she knew the unforgiving waves would throw her just as hard up the beach the next time, she would turn and dive immediately back into the sea. 

The thrill of the ride was too great, too all-encompassing, for her to give it up over a little pain. 

\--

Maggie turns Alex down in that stupid alien bar beside that stupid pool table.

Maggie turns Alex down, and Alex is a devastated, slobbering mess for a few days. That tide recedes and leaves behind it a coastline of dry, tight rage, a line cut through the sand whose arcs and points might, in the wrong light, resemble the profile of a woman’s body. 

Alex cuts Maggie off, cuts her out, after that.

Maggie texts for awhile, invitations for drinks or pool or movies, but Alex doesn’t respond.

Then the texts that come are just work-related: cases, queries, clues, but Alex doesn’t respond to those, either.

Then those stop coming, too

Maggie is a detective. She detects. Alex isn’t exactly being subtle about what she’s doing.

They don’t need each other, professionally speaking. The DEO worked fine without the help of the NCPD, and the NCPD seems to have done fine without the DEO. 

Alex stops going to Dollywood. Kara is kind enough not to challenge her on it. Alex is pretty sure Kara still goes there to see Mon-El and to be with other aliens, and she can’t be mad about that. But when Alex is going to join, Kara makes plans elsewhere. 

It’s just easier that way.

\--

Maggie can’t be that special, can she? 

She’s not the first lesbian Alex has ever met, but she’s the first Alex has become close to. She’s beautiful and kind, but the world is full of beautiful, kind women. 

Alex lets Kara set her up on Tinder. She goes on a lot of first dates. A few of them end in second dates, fewer still end in a kiss. She drives one girl home after date number two and they make out for a bit in the car, reaching for each other across the center console. Alex likes this girl; she’s a freelance graphic designer with great style and a great body and a take-no-shit attitude that makes Alex a little weak in the knees. She works a lot, like Alex does, so she gets the schedule.

She should be perfect. 

But none of it, not her lips or her touch, make Alex feel the way she felt for those fleeting seconds when she pressed her lips to Maggie’s in that stupid basement bar. 

The girl texts her over the next few days. She seems excited, at least at the beginning, and keen to see Alex again.

But Alex doesn’t respond. She doesn’t know how. “I like you, you’re great, but you’re just… not the right one?” How does Alex even know if she could be the right one? They’ve only been on two dates!

But every time Alex tries to respond, her brain goes blank. She loses all words.

The last text she receives contains a few choice expletives. 

Alex knows she deserves every one of them.

\--

The DEO calls in reinforcements to L-Corp to keep Cadmus from getting ahold of the isotope they need to weaponize the Medusa virus. Hamilton’s out for the week, so Alex is covering as DEO medical officer and can’t go herself, no matter how badly she wants to. She hovers over Winn in the hub, watching the play-by-play through the hacked surveillance, and when she sees Maggie get shot and fall, she can’t keep herself from gasping.

She watches as Maggie’s crew calls for medical while Maggie hyperventilates on the ground.

“Redirect her here,” she barks at Winn, as she turns to sprint toward the stairs to the med bay. “The hospital can’t handle that.”

“Already on it,” Winn replies, because of course he is. “Med team on their way.”

Fifteen minutes later, the elevator dings, and Alex is waiting at the doors when they open. In rushes Maggie, her shirt cut away at the shoulder, the wound packed with gauze soaked red with blood and blue with the charged substance that’s seeping into her bloodstream.

Despite everything, Maggie’s eyes meet Alex’s and the fear in them, the panic, dissipates just a little. 

“Danvers,” she gasps. “Danvers, it’s just a burn, it shouldn’t feel like this, what’s happening to me—”

Alex grabs the edge of the gurney and helps Demos and Terrell wheel it into the med bay. “Cationic plasma,” she says. “Not just a burn, it has a charge. It won’t stop hurting till I neutralize it.”

“Can you—”

“Yes. Don’t worry.”

It’s a painstaking process. Like lye for an acid burn, the solution soothes when it hits the plasma but it’s caustic on its own, so she can’t just douse Maggie’s shoulder with it. Alex numbs Maggie with lidocaine and sets to work, swabbing the wound with the neutralizing agent, wiping the mess away, and watching as the congealed particulate works its way out of Maggie’s lymphatic system so she can treat swab and wipe again. Swab, wipe, and wait; swab, wipe, and wait; until finally, after about half an hour, all that’s left is a fairly straight line, seared with the precision of a laser. 

Maggie is silent through the whole process, her forehead glistening with sweat. Alex asks if she wants a valium, maybe, but Maggie just shakes her head “no.”

“More lidocaine?”   
  


That one gets a nod.

So Alex numbs her again, and then she starts stitching.

A few minutes in, Maggie’s brow relaxes, her eyes fluttering open.

“You okay?” Alex asks.

“Yeah. Just a little nervous you’re not very good at this,” Maggie drawls, but she’s smiling.    
  
It’s a weird parody of the banter they used to share over the pool table.   
  
“Oh, really,” Alex says. “Well, clearly the drugs have kicked in, because you—” she catches the last length of thread in her forceps and reaches for the scissors—“are done.” 

“Thank you,” Maggie says.

“No, thank you,” Alex hears herself replying, and she hadn’t meant to say that. But this is the first time she’s seen Maggie in weeks and weeks, and despite the heartbreak and the frustration, Alex does know herself better now than she did before.

And now, seeing Maggie again, even like this, makes Alex realize how much she misses her. 

Even if the sight of her makes Alex’s heart beat a little fast, still, now, just like it used to.

“For what?” Maggie asks.

“I’ve been going on dates,” Alex says.

“You have? How’s it going?” Maggie asks, her eyebrow climbing in that almost roguish way it does, and Alex doesn’t want to see that. Because, God, Maggie is still more attractive than anyone else she’s tried to want.

She picks up her tray of suturing supplies and brings it to the lab bench for sterilizing.

“Pretty well,” she says, from the safety of distance with her back turned. “It’s been nice.” 

It’s not a lie. It has been nice. Not amazing, not mind-blowing, not thrilling.

But nice.   
  
“You know,” Alex continues, turning, “When you first suggested that I was gay, I, uh…” she bites her lip, because it feels so ridiculous now. But she hasn’t seen Maggie in weeks, and now here she is, lying still and trusting on Alex’s gurney, getting stitched up by Alex’s hands, and somehow, this bit of honesty feels appropriate. “Well, I denied it. And then I thought that it was just about you. I mean, how would I not like you?” 

She’s gratified when Maggie flinches a little at that.

It’s not a good flinch or a bad flinch. Alex can’t quite decipher it, and she doesn’t know which of those options she’d prefer. But it’s a reaction.   
  
She takes a breath and continues, and now the words are falling out of her.

She hadn’t realized she wanted Maggie to hear this, but now, here they are. “But, you know, deep down, I think I still wasn’t comfortable that that was my new normal. But it is my new normal. And I’m happy that it is. Because I finally get me. And now I realize that it wasn’t about you, it’s about me living my life. So thank you.” 

Maggie smiles, wide and warm and genuine. “Any time,” she says.

And Alex knows she can’t let Maggie out of her life again.

\--

Time can heal, but it can rend, too, ripping some people apart as much as it draws others together.

Alex doesn’t want to give time the opportunity to do its dirty work. She wants to keep Maggie in her life, and the best way to do that is to make it happen.

So the day after she sends Maggie home, stitched up and wearing one of Alex’s own DEO polos, Alex picks up a six-pack of IPA and takes an uber to Maggie’s apartment. 

She doesn’t call first. She doesn’t text.

She’s afraid, somehow, that if she gives Maggie the chance, she’ll tell her not to come.

So she arrives at Maggie’s building unannounced and presses the button by Maggie’s name on the door panel.

“Hello?” Maggie says, her voice tinny over the speaker.

“Hey,” Alex says. “It’s Alex.”   
  


That’s all it takes for Maggie to buzz her in.

Maggie’s apartment is warm, done up in earth tones. She has a shelf of plants by the balcony doors in her living room, prized bonsai trees near the top with succulents and trailing vines below. She prefers lamplight and rarely uses the overhead fixture, except in her kitchen. Her furniture is mostly made of light-colored pine and sleek bamboo, her sofa upholstered in some kind of soft, natural beige fabric, her walls a warm ochre. 

Alex has been here before, of course. Every time she steps into Maggie’s apartment, she feels the tension seep out of her like poison out of a wound.

Magie herself is dressed for bed, in knee-length sweatpants and a loose, wide-necked T-shirt with her hair down.

“Danvers,” she says. “What’s up?”

Alex holds out the six-pack. Maggie takes it. “I came to check up on you,” she says. “I wanted to see how you were doing.” 

“I’m all right,” Maggie says. “You fixed me up good, doc.” 

“Good,” Alex says. “Glad to hear it.”

Maggie leads her to the kitchen, where she fishes out a bottle opener and snaps the cap off of two of the bottles and hands one to Alex. They’re still cold, fortunately. Maggie holds up her beer, and Alex indulges the silent request for a clink before they each take a sip.

And then it’s quiet. Maggie stands with her hip propped against the counter. She looks down at her beer, and then off to the side, and everywhere, it seems, except at Alex.

“It’s, um, it’s your favourite, right?” Alex asks. “I know it’s your bar order.”

“Yeah,” Maggie says. “It’s good. I like this one.”

The silence stretches out. 

Alex knows why.

“I’m sorry I ghosted you,” she says.

Maggie looks up at her. “I understand why you did it. I’m not mad.” She takes another swig, swallows. “Even if it stung.”

“I, um.” Now it’s Alex’s turn to take a nervous sip, and then her eyes follow her bottle back down. She picks at the label with her thumbnail. “I wasn’t used to having rejection mean anything,” she says. “I never really cared, with guys. I used to think that was what independence looked like, you know? Being unfazed if a guy didn’t like you back. With you, it was… a wakeup call.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know.”   
  
“I didn’t want to lose you.”

Alex is quiet for a moment. It’s true. She knows it is, even if she hadn’t been able to see it at the time. “I guess I needed space,” she says. “I should have just said that.”

Maggie nods.   
  
“But I liked seeing you yesterday,” Alex goes on. “Even under the shitty circumstances. I missed you. So… so I’m here, now.”

Maggie smiles.

They go to the sofa and sit at opposite ends. Maggie tells Alex that she’s on leave at least through the end of the week, healing up. Alex updates Maggie on the Medusa fallout back at the DEO.   
  
It doesn’t take long for them to finish their drinks. And then they’re just sitting there.

“Have you changed the dressing on your stitches?” Alex asks.

“Not yet,” Maggie says. “I was about to, but then you showed up.”

“Could I look?”

Maggie bites her lip. “Okay, sure.”

She disappears into the bathroom for gauze and tape and a bottle of wound care saline, and Alex goes to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. They meet back at the sofa. Maggie pulls the collar of her shirt down off her shoulder, and Alex tries to be gentle as she runs her fingers over the tape.   
  
From the moment she walked into this apartment, Alex has done her best not to notice that Maggie isn’t wearing a bra. Of course she isn’t. She’s in her pajamas. And a bra would probably irritate the injury, anyway.

Still. 

Alex looks for a loose edge where the tape may have peeled up. Maggie inhales, because of course the area is tender, and Alex apologizes as she tries to lighten her touch. 

“Do you want to peel this off yourself?” she asks.

“No,” Maggie replies, her voice still a little tight. “This is fine.”

So Alex finds a corner and tries to be gentle as she works a fingernail under the tape and peels it away while Maggie holds very still, only moving with her breath. Alex is studious in keeping her eyes on Maggie’s skin, on Maggie’s wound; she doesn’t look at the profile of her breast below. She carefully, rigidly avoids the profile of the nipple where the fabric of the shirt hangs over it.   
  
Maggie holds her shirt collar down and looks away.

The stitches look good, the wound beginning to scab nicely. The skin around it looks healthy, with no sign of infection. Alex soaks some clean gauze in saline to gently clean the sutures, and then uses another dry piece of gauze to pat it dry. And through it all, Maggie is still, her breath steady. 

As gently as she can, Alex lays clean gauze and tapes it back into place. Maggie turns her head and manages, somehow, not to look contorted when she looks down, watching Alex's hands as she works. 

"Thank you," Maggie says. "I wasn't looking forward to handling that." 

"Any time," Alex answers, as she finishes. 

Maggie shifts the shirt back up her shoulder. 

There's something thick in the air between them. Even Alex isn't dense enough to miss it. She's trying not to notice that Maggie's nipples are hard, even though the room is warm. She’s trying not to notice that she can tell, through Maggie’s shirt. 

Maggie is chewing on her lower lip. 

"You're good with your hands," she says. 

Alex smiles. "Thanks."

They’re still close. Alex can smell Maggie’s breath, can feel the warmth radiating from her body.

Alex is still hunched low, to the level of Maggie’s wound. If Maggie leaned forward just a little, if she just tipped her head down, her lips would touch Alex’s forehead, and Alex is suddenly certain that she might actually die if she leaves here without—without knowing—if she tips her face up—

Maggie inhales and tips her head down.   
  
This is nothing like the kiss at the bar. That kiss had been about longing, about reaching across a gap to close it. It had been about the kind of desire that might be a synonym for “hope.”   
  
This kiss is about the other kinds of desire. The passion kind, but also the craving kind, the need that feels primal, like the desire for air after you’ve been underwater.    
  
It’s gentle, at first. Quiet. Maggie’s lower lip is damp where she was biting it, and Alex slides her own lips over it. Maggie’s tongue touches Alex’s cupid’s bow, and damn if Alex can stop now.    
  


As though she’s read Alex’s mind, Maggie pulls back for a moment. She curses, her lips already swollen and parted. Her mind is spinning, Alex can see it beyond her eyes.

But then she curses again and dives down. Alex’s hand moves, as if of its own accord, to cup the breast that she’d been working so hard not to look at just a minute ago.

Maggie gasps, arching into the touch, and Alex feels dizzy.    
  
Alex has never, ever desired anything as much as she wants this, right now. Maggie, desperate against her, vulnerable and begging.

“Bed,” Maggie breathes, and then kisses Alex again. “Let’s go to the bed, but don’t you fucking dare take your hands off me.”   
  
They get up and go to the bed.

\--

Alex is on her stomach with her face between Maggie’s thighs, her tongue pressing as deep as it will go. Maggie was moving a moment ago, hips grinding into Alex’s mouth, but now she’s almost frozen, knees stiff, toes curled in the duvet, quivering. She arches her back like she’s a bow, like she’s been strung, her breasts sharp in profile, straining upward. 

Alex’s desire to devour and possess is almost violent. She wants to fuck Maggie into a million pieces and then put her back together and then fuck her again. She wants to reduce Maggie into something she can claim and rend with her hands and her teeth. 

She reaches up, grabs a nipple, pinches hard.

Maggie groans, gutteral, so Alex eases up, but Maggie slaps a hand over hers, keeping it there. “Harder.”   
  
So Alex pinches harder. Then she twists, and Maggie gasps and gets wetter in her mouth, so she doesn’t let up.

Maggie’s other hand is tangled in Alex’s hair, flexing against her scalp, and Alex never in a million years would have imagined that she’d ever like the feeling of having somebody hold her head and fuck her mouth like this, but right now, she never wants this to end. She wants Maggie like this, desperate and raw, until she turns liquid, until all that’s left of both of them is what they are together.

Maggie is begging now. Her neck is arched, she’s muttering toward the headboard, she may not even notice she’s doing it. It’s barely voice, it’s barely words, but Alex hears them. She fucks Maggie again with her tongue, then slides up and licks her clit the way she has learned, tonight, that Maggie likes, along one side, at the edge of the hood.

Maggie stops breathing.

It’s excruciating and perfect.

And then she’s breathing again, sharp, ragged gasps, her chest heaving under Alex’s hand. Alex caresses her, stroking up and down her sternum, kissing the insides of her thighs. Her fingers skate along the medical tape on Maggie’s chest.

Maggie’s knees go slack, falling open, her body going soft into the mattress. She catches Alex’s hand in hers and presses her lips to the fingertips. 

She lies there, panting, for a long moment, her other hand limp in Alex’s hair.

“C’mere,” she says, after awhile. So Alex climbs up over her, hovering, until Maggie draws her down. Alex’s face is slick with Maggie. Maggie doesn’t care. She kisses her like she wants to devour her, hot and urgent and wanting.

She rolls Alex onto her back and looks down, watching, as she pushes Alex’s knee up and back. It’s the kind of thing that would make Alex feel exposed, normally, but Maggie’s eyes are dark and focused and when she touches her fingers are careful but confident, like they know exactly where to go. They touch Alex gently, like she’s precious. She’s so wet it’s almost embarrassing, but Maggie’s jaw hangs slack, and Alex notices her eyes are vacant now. She’s operating by touch, learning Alex by feel alone, slowly, with patience, and damn if it’s not the hottest thing Alex has ever felt. She closes her eyes and lets herself fall into the depth of this, of Maggie’s careful attention, and immediately her body responds, getting warmer and more slick and more open. Maggie hums, pleased, and then, with no warning, pushes inside. 

Her fingers displace all the air from Alex’s lungs.

By the end of the night, Alex has discovered that she has a G-spot, that Maggie’s fingers find it easily, and that with the right kind of touch it turns her into a puppet whose strings Maggie controls.

“I knew you’d be like this,” Maggie says, her voice rough and full of awe, as she watches Alex dissolve into matter and base instinct. Then she digs in her fingers, she presses her thumb, and she commands, “Come.”

But Alex is too lost to process the sound into a word.   
  
So Maggie leans over her, pressing her into the mattress, and tries again. “Come.”   
  
Maggie has tuned Alex into a perfect instrument, and now she moves her fingers, deep inside, a musician strumming a chord. 

Alex is gone. There’s nothing left of her but what Maggie has made her, so she does what Maggie commands, her body pulling into a spasm, breath catching.

It’s ecstasy. It's the wave, throwing her up on the beach and crashing over her head.

She gasps, like she’s been drowning. Her body shudders. Her spine is on fire.

And then she goes still.

For a long moment, she hears nothing but the sound of waves crashing in her ears.

Slowly, she picks up a hand and flexes it. It still works.

She uses it to comb sweaty hair back from her eyes. “Jesus.”   
  
The bed shifts. Maggie crawls up and flops down beside her, face half-buried under a mess of hair. “Yeah.”   
  
“I didn’t…” Alex swallows. “I didn’t come here expecting this.”

“I know.” Maggie props herself up on her elbow and tucks her hair behind her ear.

Alex remembers what that hair felt like as it trailed down her body. It makes her body clench.

“I don’t know who taught you to do that thing with your tongue,” Maggie says, dragging a fingernail down Alex’s sternum, “But if you see her again, buy her a drink and send me the tab.”    
  
Alex tenses.

She shouldn’t be surprised. Maggie made very clear, at the bar, that they weren’t in a place to be anything serious, and Alex can’t imagine anything has changed in the intervening weeks. 

The fact that this was the best sex of Alex’s life doesn’t mean it was all that special for Maggie. 

It’s long after dark. Maggie’s analog clock is ticking in the living room. Alex sits up and swings her legs off the edge of the mattress. 

“You’re leaving?” Maggie asks. Nothing about her tone suggests to Alex that Maggie has a preference about whether Alex should stay or go.

“I should get back,” Alex says, as she pulls her underwear back on. “Work tomorrow.”   
  
“Okay.”    
  
Maggie watches Alex get dressed. Watches her walk out of the bedroom and down the hall.    
  
A moment after Alex leaves the apartment, as she’s heading for the stairs at the end of the hall, she hears the distant click of the deadbolt sliding home in the lock.

\--

The problem is, now that they’ve started, Alex finds it hard to know how to stop. 

Maggie is the one who stopped them before. Maggie is the one who said, “I like you, it’s just the situation.”   
  
But apparently Alex isn’t the only person who can’t bring herself to give up what she and Maggie had. 

They don’t talk for a week after that night at Maggie’s. When it’s time to take the stitches out, Alex sends one of the med techs to Maggie’s apartment to do it. 

Then Alex gets taken captive by a White Martian in the DEO and it takes hours for anyone to notice that the creature using her name and her face isn’t really her. And during those hours, the Martian is rutting through her brain, through her memories and her desires and her deepest sense of self. 

And then, when she gets home, Maggie’s waiting for her, propped against the doorframe outside her apartment. 

“What are you doing here?” Alex asks, and immediately regrets it.   
  
She’s raw.   
  
“Hello to you too, Danvers,” Maggie says, straightening. “M’gann texted me. Said you had a rough evening and asked me to come spend some time with you.”    
  
Alex sighs, then unlocks her apartment and gestures Maggie in. 

Inside, Maggie looks around, a little uncomfortable. She’s been here before, but only once or twice.    
  
“You can sit,” Alex says. “Want a drink?”   
  
“Wouldn’t mind some water,” Maggie replies. “Thanks.”

They sit side by side, each sipping from water glasses, when Alex suddenly realizes that Maggie is wearing a Barenaked Ladies shirt.   
  
Shit. That show was tonight, wasn’t it? She’d thought about going, but hadn’t wanted to go alone. Kara’s super-hearing didn’t do well at rock concerts.   
  
Then she glances at her watch. It’s only 9 pm. The show’s probably still going on.   
  
“Maggie, did you leave the concert to come here?”   
  
Maggie shrugs. “M’gann said you needed me and it was important.”   
  
And fuck, Alex is trying so hard to manage her feelings, but here Maggie is, so goddamn selfless, like always.    
  
Maggie is being polite by not asking what happened. Alex knows M’gann wouldn’t have shared the details. So she figures the least she can do is give an explanation.   
  
“White Martian got me,” she says. “Just for a few hours. I’m okay now.”   
  
“Jesus, Danvers.” Maggie’s expression turns hard and worried and she scoots closer on the sofa. “Are you sure you’re all right?”   
  
“Yeah. Just tired. And a little pissed, honestly, that it took so long for them to figure it out.” 

She wonders if that’s why M’gann called Maggie: because she knew Alex would need to have someone around whom she trusted but who also hadn’t been there, locked in the DEO with her. She wouldn’t want to be alone so soon after an abduction, but she also wouldn’t want to be with someone who had made her angry because they hadn’t been able to tell who she was.   
  
M’gann could tell that despite everything, despite how Alex had shut Maggie out after the rejection, Alex couldn’t help but trust her.   
  
“Those things are vicious, sociopathic geniuses,” Maggie says. “They can fool even people’s close relatives. It doesn’t say anything about what you mean to those people.”   
  


“No, I know. In my head, I know, but I just…” Alex sighs and bends forward, dropping her elbows onto her knees.

“Well, for what it’s worth, I’d have been able to tell,” Maggie says, with a hint of smile in her voice.

Alex turns to look at her. “Really,” she says. It comes out drily. 

Maggie grins. “Yeah.”   
  
“How?”   
  
“Let me see your back.”   
  
Alex furrows her brow and turns, showing Maggie her back.   
  
“No, your actual back,” Maggie says, hooking a finger under the hem of Alex’s shirt. “If it’s not too weird.”

Alex doesn’t know if it’s weird, but she rucks up her shirt anyway.

“Yeah, it’s you,” Maggie says, and then her fingers touch Alex’s skin.

They’re cold from holding the water glass, and Alex hisses.

“Sorry,” Maggie says, but she keeps her touch there and then slides it up and runs her fingers along an angle, following Alex’s ribcage. “White Martians mimic people’s appearances by a combination of what they see and by absorbing a person’s self-image. That’s how they can get things like the birthmarks under your clothes,” she explains. “But most people can’t picture their own backs very well. You know you have a scar here,” she says, running her fingers down and up again, “but you probably can’t picture it. You know you have freckles, but probably not where they are.” Her finger dances over the skin, tapping the little marks as though she were following a constellation. “The Martian wouldn’t have seen your back, either. So they would have gotten it wrong, but it didn’t matter because there was nobody there who would have known.”   
  
There’s a heavy weight left unsaid, here.   
  
Maggie knows what Alex’s back looks like because Maggie dragged her tongue down the length of it while she pushed Alex’s underwear down.   
  
Maggie knows what Alex’s back feels like because she ran her nails down it hard enough to leave marks.   
  
And now Maggie is here, in Alex’s apartment, while her favourite band is probably halfway through its second set a mile away. Her hands are on Alex’s skin, and suddenly Alex feels more solid and present than she has felt since that fucking thing grabbed her and wrapped her in that fucking web.

Did M’gann know this would happen? Is that why she sent Maggie?    
  
Maggie pulls her hands away, and Alex makes a little noise she doesn’t mean to make. It’s sad, disappointed.    
  


“You okay?” Maggie asks.   
  
“It felt nice,” Alex admits. “It helps.”   
  
There’s a long pause, and then Maggie touches her again.    
  
Her hand has warmed against Alex’s skin. She lays it flat now, palm to spine, and rubs a small, gentle circle.

“Good?” Maggie asks.   
  
Alex hums.

They stay like that for awhile, Maggie rubbing warm circles on Alex’s back. They start small and then grow, sliding up over that old scar and circling wide over Alex’s spine, below her bra.

Alex doesn’t even notice herself pulling the shirt higher, giving more skin.   
  
Maggie doesn’t say anything, but she takes what’s offered, her fingers following the outline of the racer back of Alex’s sports bra. Alex feels like Maggie is reassembling her. Like her body is becoming real because Maggie is touching it.

She hikes her shirt up higher, tugging the back hem up to her shoulders and holding it there with her hands, arms crossed over her chest. Maggie uses both hands now, fingers sliding over Alex’s shoulder blades and down, palms following the muscles along her spine.   
  
Something about the movement draws Alex’s shoulders up. She had been hunching, her shoulder rounded, but her back straightens now, under Maggie’s touch.    
  
Maggie’s hands settle on either side of Alex’s waist.   
  
“I should go,” she says, her voice rough.   
  
“Please don’t,” Alex says, just as ragged.   
  
She glances back over her shoulder. Maggie’s eyes are dark, her pupils dilated, and Alex knows her own are just as bad.    
  
She takes her shirt off.   
  
“Please stay,” she says, looking over her shoulder again.   
  
Maggie breathes deeply once, twice, her nostrils flaring. Then she seems to make a decision.

“Fuck.”   
  
And then her mouth is on Alex’s shoulder, following the slope of the muscle. Her hands are on Alex’s sides, then sliding to her stomach, pressing hard with her fingers. Alex’s head tips back until it lands on Maggie’s shoulder, and then she turns, opens her mouth, fills it with the skin of Maggie’s neck and jaw.   
  
“Fuck,” Maggie curses again, and shoves her hand under Alex’s bra. She rubs a nipple with the pads of her fingers and that, just that, is enough to make Alex groan. Alex wants to take the bra off but that would mean moving her mouth away from Maggie’s neck and she’s vanishing again, but this time she’s vanishing into her body instead of out of it, and it feels so supremely, excruciatingly perfect, a remedy she hadn’t known existed for everything she’s gone through today.   
  
She bites Maggie’s earlobe. Maggie hisses, tearing her mouth away from Alex’s shoulder, and then she turns her head and kisses Alex fiercely, mouth open, teeth teasing.

Alex hitches her knee up onto the sofa, propping it against the padded back, and Maggie takes it for the invitation it is. A quick tug on the fly of Alex’s jeans is all it takes to open them, and then her hand slides inside, first over Alex’s underwear, then under them. 

“Jesus,” Maggie breathes, “is this just from me touching your back?”   
  
It would be embarrassing if Alex were in any shape to be embarrassed.   
  
Alex looks down. Maggie has one hand in her bra and the other down her pants and is watching them move under the fabric. She is watching this happen and feeling it happen and the synchrony is impossible and perfect; she surrenders to it, falling back into Maggie’s arms, and something about that clearly turns Maggie on.   
  
“Is this good?” she murmurs, even though the answer is obvious. She wants to hear it. Alex is happy to give her what she wants.

“It’s perfect,” she says. “It’s everything I didn’t know I needed right now.”

“Good,” Maggie says, and then she shoves the bra up, finally, so it bunches in Alex’s armpits and she’s doing absurd things with one hand to Alex’s nipples and her fingers are fast and firm on Alex’s clit and when Alex finally comes she shouts, some part of her psyche tearing itself out of her, only to settle back into her body a moment later, more settled than it’s been for hours.   
  
She feels Maggie holding her up, moving Alex’s body with her breaths. 

And Alex wants to reciprocate. She does. But she’s exhausted, and she finally feels some semblance of peace with her skin and her bones and her organs and the matter that make up all the parts of herself.

“Hush,” Maggie mutters. But Alex doesn’t need to be settled that way. She is already half asleep as Maggie slips out from behind her, settling her head on a throw pillow and covering her with a throw blanket.   
  
She doesn’t hear Maggie leave.   
  
When she wakes up the following morning, still in the same place, there’s a note on the coffee table:  _ Text when you get up so I know you’re ok. xo M. _

\--

After the second time, Maggie and Alex don’t go back to pretending they’re not friends who fuck.

Two days after Maggie left Alex sleeping on her sofa, Alex goes to Maggie’s house and kneels between Maggie’s legs and uses her tongue until her jaw is too tired to keep going. She learns that Maggie keens when she’s close, these light, high-pitched whines that seem totally out of character. Once Alex’s jaw is tired, she uses her fingers, and that’s a new experience, wet and warm, Maggie’s body first clasping at Alex and then opening, inviting more of her. Alex goes slow, exploring gently until she knows which spots feel good, and something about that curls Maggie’s lip in arousal. She basks in the attention. The care, the unhurried patience of it, turns her on, so Alex is unhurried and careful and patient.

Three days after that, Maggie shows up at Alex’s apartment and they don’t make it past the sofa before Alex has her hand down Maggie’s pants, grabbing her ass, and Maggie has her hand up Alex’s shirt. 

Alex learns to keep a pack of hair ties in her bedside drawer, the same way she’d kept condoms at an earlier, more ignorant point in her life.

A week later, again at Alex’s, it doesn’t take long for Maggie to end up on her stomach, gripping the comforter and panting into a pillow while Alex works with her fingers and kisses her back. 

Alex learns that it’s actually pretty great to get slapped on the ass under the right circumstances, if you’re on the verge of an orgasm and you like the person doing the slapping.

A thing that Alex is learning, in all this, is that inhibitions are no obstacle in the face of sheer, visceral, completely uncontainable lust. Before Maggie, her sex life was informed by a weird, Hollywood idea of what looked erotic. She would imagine her body and his in a frame, and determine what was good by what would look good captured by that camera. 

But not now. Now, she doesn’t have the brainpower to think that far. Her ovaries have taken over and shut down every reticence that might keep her from wanting to try anything, literally anything, that she thinks might feel good.

Like now, she’s sitting on the edge of her bed and Maggie is straddling her and neither of them are wearing shirts. They’re kissing, deep and hot and wet, and Maggie is grinding down into her lap and muttering “Next time we do this at my place, I’m getting out my strap-on.” And Alex has always thought strap-ons sounded silly but now, in this moment, it short-circuits her brain.

Maggie pulls back like she does, watching with a sly smile as Alex loses herself in her arousal, and she brushes her thumb against Alex’s lower lip and Alex doesn’t think before taking it into her mouth.

And then it’s Maggie’s turn to short-circuit. Alex has to hold her tight to keep her from falling. When Maggie manages to gather herself, she taps at Alex’s lips with her index finger. So Alex fucks that finger with her mouth, too, and then each of the others of that in turn, and Maggie is slack-jawed and glassy-eyed as she watches her fingers play with Alex’s lips and tongue. 

Then she flips Alex onto her back and uses those fingers to make her beg. 

The next time, they end up at Maggie’s place. Alex texted her before going over and sure enough, there’s a harness and dildo on the nightstand when they stumble into the bedroom.

“That confident, were you?” Alex says, smirking.

Maggie smiles and kisses her again. “Have you used one before?”

“No,” Alex says, because Maggie doesn’t know, doesn’t understand, that—

“Want to try?” Maggie asks.    
  
“Giving or receiving?”   
  
“Whatever suits you.”

That’s how they end up with Alex kneeling and watching, entranced, as Maggie straddles her lap and slides down onto her.

Sex with Maggie is surprising every time, but Alex is almost overwhelmed by how visceral this is. She pulls Maggie close, wraps her tightly in her arms, so the fronts of their bodies are flush; Maggie’s pubic hair tickles her abdomen, her breasts rest overtop of Alex’s. She feels Maggie hold her breath and then gasp it out against her skin, settling in deeper.

“You good?” Alex asks, between kisses pressed to Maggie’s neck and shoulder.

Maggie hums, then slides her hand down to the small of Alex’s back, fingertips in the groove of Alex’s spine, and pulls. “So good.” 

Then she starts moving. 

There’s not much Alex can do from this position, but there’s something hot about that, about the way she can do nothing but hold still while Maggie moves slow and steady against her. She lifts her head from Maggie’s shoulder and Maggie lifts hers too, only to have it fall back like it’s too heavy for her to hold. So Alex holds it for her, fingers tight in her hair by her scalp, while Maggie moves like she’s made of water. Only the bedside lamp is on, dim behind its shade, and it throws Maggie’s features into relief, half of her face in shadow and the other half glowing amber. Alex runs her thumb over Maggie’s cheekbone and Maggie turns her face toward it like she’s magnetized, taking the tip of that thumb into her teeth, still rolling her hips.

Alex glances down and watches the push and pull of the toy disappearing into Maggie’s body over and over and over again.

Fuck.

And Alex hasn’t had this kind of sex before—or at least, not from this end of things—but she knows a few things about human bodies and leverage so it’s almost an instinctual move to roll Maggie onto her back and herself on top of her. The placement isn’t ideal, Maggie’s head half falling off the edge of the bed, but Maggie doesn’t seem to care. She wraps her legs around Alex’s hips and Alex pushes into her as hard as she can, relishing the way Maggie’s fingernails score dents into the skin over her spine. She goes too far the first time she pulls back, slipping out by accident, but Maggie just smiles and reaches for her and guides her back in. It takes her another minute or two to get a feel for the length and how much to move, but Maggie pulls her down so they’re flush again and whispers encouragement in her ear and even though it’s just silicone and nylon, purple and black and not even trying to pretend to be anything other than fake, Alex feels like they’re joined, that they’ve made one out of the two of themselves. And then, when Maggie slides a hand down, presses her fingers to her own clit to pull herself over the edge, Alex can imagine that she feels Maggie’s orgasm inside her own body. Like an echo.

Every time, at the end of things, they slide apart and roll over and laugh a little like they’ve just done something surprising and maybe a little ridiculous. Maggie pulls the elastic out of her hair, ruffling it loose, and Alex stretches like a happy cat. 

“You sure you’ve never done that before?” Maggie asks, this time.

And there it is: the snap back to reality.

“Yes,” Alex says. “I’m pretty sure I’d remember.”   


And you’d have been there, she thinks. You’ve been there every time.

“Well, you’re brilliant at it,” Maggie says. “Tell the next girl she owes me a drink, though.” 

The next girl. Because Alex is too new, and doesn’t know what she wants. 

And Maggie is probably right, Alex thinks. Because Maggie clearly knows how to separate fucking from feeling, while for Alex, the two seem to be getting more and more tightly tangled up with each passing day.

Maggie clearly knows what she wants, and has decided Alex isn’t it—or at least, Alex isn’t it for more than this. 

Alex stands up, then, and goes fishing for her socks. She finds her underwear, but they’re in no condition to be worn, so she puts her jeans on commando and stuffs them into her pocket. They’ll go straight into the hamper at home.    
  
“I’ll see you Wednesday for that meeting?” Maggie asks. It’s an inter-agency follow-up about Roulette’s interplanetary slavery ring, on the books for a couple of weeks.

Alex shrugs her jacket on and glances back over her shoulder. “Wouldn’t miss it,” she says, and then heads for the door. 

\--   
  


It continues.

Alex can’t bring herself to stop.

The thing with discovering, at 28, that you actually do like sex, is that it makes you a bit obsessed. Alex has gone from not really thinking about sex much at all to craving it. 

She should be able to have meaningless sex. She’s done it before. There was a point when she’d come close to making a habit of it. 

That’s what she tells herself, anyway: that this is just sex, that it’s fun, that if it’s turning her brain to soup it’s because she’s never had sex that she liked before and the endorphins are screwing with her the way they would with an addiction. 

She forces herself to go on dates. It keeps Kara happy, because Kara doesn’t know what Alex and Maggie have been doing, and even if she did, she wouldn’t understand. So Alex goes on dates with women who are beautiful and smart and kind and interested and then she parts ways with them and goes to Maggie’s and confirms that, indeed, the little eddies she sometimes feels for them can’t compare to the way Maggie pulls on her like a storm surge.

Maggie, whose chest is still heaving, who has barely caught her breath when she says, “I saw you the other night at the pinball bar.”   
  
The other night. The pinball bar. Her name had been Tonya. They’d had fun. And as soon as the date was over, Alex had taken her bike to Maggie’s and tried to get buzzed in, but there had been nobody home.

“Yeah?” Alex says.   
  
“She was cute,” Maggie says. “I hope you got a second date.”

Tonya had wanted to go out again. Alex had declined. 

\--

There’s a moment. Just one moment where Alex thinks that maybe, just maybe, she’s reading this wrong, that she’s reading Maggie wrong. 

That maybe there’s room for them to become more than what they are.

It happens like this:   
  
They’re at Maggie’s.

Alex is on her knees and elbows and Maggie is behind her, screwing her slowly and gently and perfectly. She has one hand on Alex’s hip and the other stroking the length of Alex’s spine, gentle pressure with her nails, and it makes every hair on Alex’s back stand up. 

Alex has been on this end of the toy a few times, now, but never in this position. She’s had sex like this before and found she didn’t like it much; it tended to make men forget about her as they fixated on gripping her by the waist and driving in to get themselves off.

But Maggie had said, “If it was done right, with a G-spot like yours, I bet you’d like it. But no pressure, we don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

And everything Maggie has ever said or done when it comes to sex with Alex has been perfect, as though Maggie can read Alex’s vagus nerve like Braille with her fingers, so Alex agrees to try.

So far, Maggie was right. The slow, gentle rocking laps against the  _ perfect  _ spot inside her, teasing on the way in and pulling hard on the way out, and Alex’s elbows are about to give out under her from the pleasure of it. Her toes are curling, her fingers like claws in the bedspread, her head lolling down below her shoulders. Maggie’s hands are warm, moving over her back with a gentle possession. One reaches around and cups Alex’s breast, fondling it gently, and this is the opposite of being forgotten. This is—God, she feels like the center of a whirlpool, like everything is spiralling toward her. She starts moving her hips a little differently, just to see how it feels.    
  
“Yeah,” Maggie murmurs. “That’s good. That’s so good, you’re so fucking hot, Alex.” 

Her hand is on Alex’s ass now, gripping it with hard fingers.

“Do it,” Alex gasps. “I know you want to.”

Maggie spanks her.

All of Alex’s synapses fire at once, but she doesn’t come. She can’t come like this, not without something on her clit, but her whole body vibrates, endorphins rushing.

“Again,” Alex groans.   
  
Maggie obliges. Alex shudders so hard she almost slides off Maggie’s cock.

And through all this, Maggie’s slow, steady pace doesn’t falter. Maggie bends over her, nips at her shoulders with her teeth, and groans, “God, the things you make me want to do to you.”

She reaches around, tweaks Alex’s nipple hard. Alex’s shoulders cave in. Her muscles are going slack and loose and she feels open and desperate and she wants to buy a bigger toy for Maggie to wear the next time they do this. She wants Maggie to wreck her. 

“Do what you want,” Alex groans. “Whatever you want, just do it.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”   
  
“I don’t care,” Alex pants. “I’ll stop you if I need to. You know I will.”   
  
“Fuck,” Maggie groans. She grabs Alex by the hips and drives hard into her, just once, as if to make a point, their hips colliding with a slap. Then she’s back to slow and steady, but she spanks Alex’s ass again, on the other side this time, and again, and it knocks the air from Alex’s lungs in the most excruciating, perfect way.

And then she’s — oh, God, that’s Maggie’s finger, first teasing, then pushing inside, and Alex has never, ever taken penetration  _ there _ before but now, like this, it makes her whole body clench. She clenches on the cock, clenches on the finger, makes a sound that doesn’t feel human.

“Christ, Alex,” Maggie rasps. “Is this good?”   
  
“Fuck yes,” Alex says, driving her hips back harder. Her breaths are coming out in quiet, high-pitched keens, and she’s  _ this  _ close to just giving in and letting her arms go soft, flopping her shoulders and face onto the mattress, when Maggie leans forward, hooks the fingers of her other hand over Alex’s shoulder and  _ lifts _ .

That soft strum against her G-spot is a firm and solid pressure, now, as Maggie lifts her until Maggie’s front is flush with Alex’s back. Alex has to brace her hands against her own thighs to stay up like this, but Maggie’s arm is strong and solid and she feels trapped and held in the best possible way.

“Move,” Maggie breathes into her ear, because in this position, Maggie can only sit still under her. So Alex does, she picks up the slow grind that Maggie had started, and now the cock drags on her G-spot on both the up and the down and it makes Alex’s eyes roll.

And that’s when she sees it.

The door to Maggie’s closet is half open, just enough that Alex can catch a sliver of their reflection in the mirror there. 

It isn’t much. A slice that runs from Maggie’s knee through Alex’s hip, catching her breast in Maggie’s hand. She can’t see where Maggie is inside her, not with the toy or with her other, hidden hand, but she can see a slice of Maggie’s face, kissing the side of her neck, and then her eyes, that are wide and soft and reverent. Maggie isn’t looking at the mirror. It seems she hasn’t even noticed it. Her eyes are locked on the side of Alex’s face as though she were looking at something perfect or precious.

Alex reaches up with one hand and reaches for Maggie’s cheek. She turns her head, finds Maggie’s mouth, and they kiss for a long, long time.

When they pull back, their eyes lock, and Alex is sure that everything she feels, everything she wants, is there for Maggie to read. Every part of her shell and armor have been cut away and Maggie is holding the rawest, purest, most malleable version of her, and she desperately hopes that Maggie can tell.   
  
And Maggie is looking at her with a gaze Alex has never seen before, not sharp or tough but soft and almost wet. She’s looking at Alex the way people look at devotional objects, as though they embody every hope and desire and possibility.

“Please,” Alex whispers. She wants so many things. She’s asking for all of them.

Maggie gives her the simplest version, bringing her free hand to Alex’s clit and rubbing it just right, exactly where Alex likes it, until Alex loses all strength in her muscles. Everything goes white and she falls forward, drained and overwhelmed and helpless, onto the mattress.

And despite that, despite everything they’ve just done and seen and revealed by every means possible but words, Alex is on her bike a half hour later, riding home. 

\--

Alex gets kidnapped. 

When she’s figured out who it is, while she’s sitting in that cell, she wants to scream and kick things. 

She’s the assistant director of a fucking black ops organization, trained to take down aliens twice her size with her bare hands, and yet here she is, bested by a jilted high school crush with a wad of cheese-cloth soaked in chloroform. 

She looks down at her hands, dirty with traces of her own blood, and feels the throb in her shoulder where she carved the tracker out. It’ll only take a few minutes. Just a few more minutes, and someone will be here.

And then there’s a knocking sound in the pipe behind her, and then, suddenly, water surging out, splashing over her feet. 

Water rushing, flowing, and not a shoreline in sight.

When it pulls her under, hours later, it’s nothing like being dragged under a wave. There’s no violent pull to it just a slowly rising tide, drop by drop, lifting the air until it’s too high to reach.    
  
Alex takes her last gasp and goes under. 

But then—but then—the glass breaks. Then there’s a wave, lifting her up and throwing her out onto the concrete, battering and bruising her and then receding. She doesn’t know who’s there; there was no sound underwater. It’s Kara, surely it’s Kara, no human body is this warm, it’s warm, Alex thought she’d never be warm again. 

Not only Kara, though? Another body, too small and cool to be J’onn’s.

Maggie.

Alex is leaning into Kara’s body but Maggie is here, reaching for her hand.    
  
And Alex doesn’t know what to say but she holds as tight as she can, as though Maggie’s fingers in hers were a lifeline.

That night, Kara comes home with her. She stays on the sofa while Alex showers for far longer than necessary, scrubbing away the acetone phantom of chloroform and the knowledge that she spent several hours soaking in a very dilute solution of her own piss. When Alex comes out, there are potstickers and moo shu pork and wonton soup and fried rice and shrimp shumai set out on the kitchen island in their take-out cartons.   
  
Alex starts with the wonton soup.

“Ask me,” Kara says, after several minutes of no sound but chewing. “I can tell you want to.”   
  
Alex doesn’t have the energy to pretend she doesn’t know what Kara is talking about, or to put up a fight. “Why was Maggie there?”   
  
“Because I screwed up,” Kara says. “Your tracker showed up online and I went for it, and I fell right into his trap. We were down to four hours to find you. We needed a detective. Someone who knew how to handle a kidnapping and would stop me from falling for the same tricks and could work with the DEO. And, ideally, who would care about finding you.”

Oh, Alex thinks. Well. That’s… logical, and tidy, and does not at all explain why Maggie had clung to her hand like she’d feared Alex would slip away.

“You need to talk to her,” Kara says.   
  
Alex frowns. “Surely J’onn debriefed her—”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.” 

Alex takes another bite of her pork wrap so she doesn’t have to say anything.

“She was willing to do things even I didn’t want to do to get you back,” Kara says, her voice gentle.

It takes all of Alex’s willpower not to throw her food back down into the carton. “I’ve had a shitty day,” she says. “I don’t have the energy for cryptic right now, Kara, so—”   


“She tried to free Peter Thompson.”

Alex turns and looks at Kara, whose face is dead serious.

“She wouldn’t.”   


“She did.”   
  
“How do you know? She talks a big game, but—”   
  
“I literally intercepted her in Albatross when she’d already gotten him out of his cell, Alex. She was serious.” 

Well, Jesus.

Maggie, who believes in due process and the rule of law, had been willing to put a serial killer back on the streets.

For her.

“Listen,” Kara says, gently. “I think you need to talk to her.”   
  
“Why? This doesn’t change anything.”   
  
“Don’t be obtuse, Alex. I know what she told you months ago, but I’m pretty sure things are different for her now. And I know you’ve been trying to be friends with her for this past little while, but I don’t get the impression your feelings have changed much. So talk to her. I think you could be good for each other.”

Alex has the next day off. She has the week off, though she doesn’t plan to actually stay away from the DEO that long. So she sleeps well in her bed knowing that Kara is asleep on the couch. She goes grocery shopping and treats herself to a fancy latte and schedules her first mandated trauma session with the DEO shrink. 

Then, in the evening, she gets on her bike and goes to Maggie’s.   
  
No call-ahead, no warning. She doesn’t want to give Maggie the chance to come up with excuses. She just announces herself at the buzzer and waits to be let in. 

She hasn’t seen Maggie since yesterday. Maggie and Kara had walked her out of the warehouse, holding her up from either side, and she had been loaded into an ambulance and then she hadn’t seen Maggie again.    
  
Maggie lets her into her apartment and, before Alex can even open her mouth to speak, Maggie has tugged their bodies together and is kissing her. The feel of Maggie’s kiss is familiar now, how it’s warm and firm and how Maggie instinctively slots her lower lip into Alex’s mouth and draws Alex’s upper lip into her own. And Alex should stop her. Should push her away, tell her they need to talk, but she has never been able to resist this. This is no different from any of the other times they’ve screwed and avoided any discussion of its significance.

Except that this  _ is _ different. 

Their kisses don’t linger, normally. Kissing is a prelude to what comes next. It’s a warm-up. But Maggie is holding Alex’s face in both her hands and kissing her unhurriedly, like she could linger here for the rest of the night. 

Alex’s hands slide under the hem of Maggie’s shirt and they kiss their way through the living room, bumping into furniture, and then down the short hall to the bedroom. Normally they’d be at least half-naked by the time they reach the bedroom door, but they’re both wearing all the clothes they were wearing when Alex walked in. Beside the bed, Alex bends to get at the fastenings on her boots, but Maggie gets there first, pulling down the zippers inside the ankles and sliding them off of Alex’s feet tenderly.

Maggie undresses Alex slowly, kissing along her stomach as she pushes up her shirt, kissing her lips as she unfastens her bra. Alex is a little bruised from when the water threw her to the concrete outside the tank. It’s nothing terrible, all things considered, but Maggie skims her hands over Alex’s skin like it’s fragile, holding together the pieces of someone precious.   
  
It’s a struggle for Alex to get Maggie to step back for long enough for Alex to undress her.

They’ve fucked a lot, Alex and Maggie, but what they do now doesn’t feel like fucking. It reminds Alex of that gentle first time: slow, patient, full of discovery. Alex is on her back and Maggie lies along her side, kissing her breasts while her fingers slide between Alex’s thighs. The air heats, thickens. Alex feels wrapped in it, warm and protected. Maggie’s arm is behind Alex’s head and Alex rolls her body into Maggie’s, hitching a knee up and over Maggie’s hip.    
  
Their bodies barely move, just Maggie’s careful fingers sliding over and around Alex’s clit in hypnotic patterns, and Alex’s shifting hips held captive by the rhythm of touch.    
  
“Go inside me,” Alex whispers, breathless.

Maggie kisses her tenderly and does.

Alex thinks of floating in the deep water, where waves are rolling, unbroken swells. The heat of the sun warms face, her eyes closed under the glare, and her ears feed back the sound of her own pulse under the water. Held, protected, she drifts where time and gravity don’t exist. Her body defies itself. 

That’s how this feels. 

The orgasm is low, and smooth, and long, an ocean swell instead of a crashing tidal wave. Alex still feels wrung out by it. Her softest parts feel exposed and prodded and she folds herself into Maggie, her face pressed to the hollow above Maggie’s breasts, and Maggie holds her close and kisses her crown and says nothing. 

There, in that heavy quiet, Alex finally speaks.

“Kara told me what you did.”   
  
Maggie sighs. “Kara talks too much.” 

“You’re not denying it.” Because despite everything, Alex had thought she might. Alex had thought that Kara had perhaps been confused, or had been spinning a story to give Alex hope for something she’d given up on.   
  
But Maggie rolls away, putting space between them, and props herself up on her elbow. “What are you going to do, Danvers? Turn me in for doing what it took to save your life?”

“No, of course not,” Alex says, propping herself up on her elbows, too. “I just—I know you, Maggie. I know how serious you are about policies. So I want to know why.”   
  
Maggie laughs drily. “Suddenly you want to know things about me.”

It hits Alex like a slap. She rolls over, stands up, and begins to look for her socks. 

She can’t keep doing this. 

She can’t keep throwing herself at Maggie to feel special, only to curdle and shrivel alone in the aftermath. 

She can’t.

“I think this is over,” Alex says, with every ounce of her frustration. “I think I’m done with whatever this is.”   
  
“Okay,” Maggie says, just as angrily. “I guess you’re doing well out there. Figured you’d get tired of me and move on eventually.”   
  
“Jesus, Maggie,” Alex growls, as she pulls her shirt over her head, not bothering with her bra. “I’m not tired of you. I’ve never been tired of you.”   
  
Maggie waves a hand dismissively. “Sure, Romeo.”

That makes Alex even more angry.

“Look. You made very clear to me where we stood. I was too new for you. These things don’t work out. The very first time we slept together, you made a joke about me dating other women and didn’t even entertain the possibility that maybe, I don’t know, we might want to date each other. So yeah, I tried to date, exactly like you seemed to think I should. You going to be mad about that, now?”   
  
There’s quiet for a long moment. Alex is mostly dressed, and Maggie is still lying there, completely naked, in the middle of the bed.

“No,” Maggie says, but her tone is different. Her voice cracks. She blinks, and in the light, Alex realizes her eyes are wet. 

That’s unexpected.

“No,” Maggie says again. “You’re doing exactly what you should be doing.” 

“What’s that?” Alex asks. “Screwing you and dating other people?”

Maggie’s face is impassive. “If that’s what makes you happy.”

It sounds passive-aggressive. It sounds manipulative.

Alex fucking despises passive aggression and manipulation.  
  
“What about what makes _you_ happy?” Alex says, making no attempt to keep her tone in check. “Because the only time in all of this that you’ve been clear about what you want was when you told me quite clearly that you _didn’t want_ _me._ ”  
  
For a long time, Maggie doesn’t answer, and Alex doesn’t move. The apartment is silent except for the sound of the ticking clock in the other room. 

And then Maggie sniffs. It’s wet and cruddy, and then she rubs at her eyes, and even in this dim light, Alex sees the glint of moisture on her cheeks. 

“I want you to be happy,” Maggie says, and her tone is pretty much the same as it was a moment ago, but Alex realizes it’s not passive-aggressive. It’s not manipulative.

It’s raw and honest. It’s the truth.

Alex wilts. “Maggie—”   
  
“I wanted you to do better than me,” Maggie presses on. “I’ve screwed up every relationship I’ve ever had, Alex. Especially the ones that mattered. I wanted you to have better than that. You were dating, and that was good. I figured you’d eventually find someone who got you, who was right for you, and you’d move on and be happy. And I’ve wanted to quit this so many times, Alex, I’ve tried, but I couldn’t—”

“Why?” Alex says, and now her voice is cracking. She steps forward until she’s near Maggie’s feet. Maggie, wearing nothing but her skin, and hiding no part of herself. “Why couldn’t you?”

Maggie sniffs again, and pinches at the bridge of her nose. “You’re really going to make me say it?”   
  
“Yeah, Maggie, I am.” Because Alex has never, not for a second, stopped wanting more than this. She has never, not for a second, stopped wanting Maggie to be more to her than she is.

“Because I want you,” Maggie says, exhausted and fierce and brave. “I want you so much.”   
  
Alex inhales, her breath shaking, and then lets it out. 

“Want” is ambiguous. “Want” can mean a lot of things.

“Want me how?” she asks.   
  
“However I can have you,” Maggie answers. “I’ll take what I can get.”

There it is.   
  
“You could have had me,” Alex says, her voice breaking. “You could have had all of me.”

“But?” Maggie presses.

“But nothing, Maggie. I left that first night because I thought you wanted me to. I’ve left every time after that because I didn’t think you wanted me to stay.”

She waits for Maggie to say something. And waits, and waits, but nothing comes.

With a sigh, she bends and picks up her jacket. She shrugs it on with a bit more force than necessary.

She turns for the bedroom door. She’s going to go home, and this time, she’s not coming back.

But there’s one thing she needs to make clear, first. She stands there with a hand on the rim of the door and looks back, over her shoulder, where Maggie still hasn’t moved. 

“There was nobody else,” Alex says. “No other women.”   


“What? Alex, I  _ saw _ you out with—”

“I didn’t sleep with any of them,” Alex clarifies. “I’ve only slept with you.”

A beat passes. Another.

“Oh,” Maggie says, barely loud enough to hear. 

And that’s all.

Alex leaves the bedroom. 

She walks down the hall and picks up her helmet from the end of the sofa where she dropped it.

She walks toward the front door.   
  
“Alex.”

She stops. Turns.

Maggie is standing at the mouth of the hallway, barefoot.

She’s still not wearing anything, but there’s something about her bare feet on the hardwood floor that tugs at Alex’s heart. She’s flexing her toes, like a dancer warming up, but it’s just nervous energy fidgeting itself out. Her arms are crossed over her chest, holding herself more than hiding herself.

“Stay,” she says.

Alex’s heart stops.

“Please, stay,” Maggie whispers.

“For the night?” 

Maggie nods.

Alex swallows. “ _ Just _ for the night?”

Something with a siren drives by outside, lights flashing, sound off. The blue and red illuminate Maggie’s earth-tone apartment in unnatural colours, just for a few seconds.

Maggie takes a breath, like she’s about to dive underwater.

“For as long as you want,” she says. Then: “For as long as you’ll have me.”

The words are so unexpected, Alex can’t process them at first.

Maggie stands, perfectly still now, and waits.

And Alex smiles.

She sets her helmet back down on the sofa and walks up to Maggie, who smiles soft and hesitant at her as she approaches. She puts her hands on Maggie’s wrists, still crossed so tightly over herself, and presses them down and apart so that she can interlace their fingers together.

Then she draws them back into Maggie’s bedroom.   


There, in the dark, Alex undresses, while Maggie sits perched on the edge of the mattress, hands resting between her knees. 

And then, when they’re both naked, Maggie slides into bed and draws Alex after her, the duvet unfurling over them like a wave. 

**Author's Note:**

> Not gonna lie, I was nervous AF to share this, so a few words in the comment box will really help me settle my "that was stupid why did you post this" jitters.


End file.
